


Life, Unexpected

by GoldenTruth813



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 8th year, M/M, dralentines day, happy endings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 16:50:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6247897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenTruth813/pseuds/GoldenTruth813
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Draco comes back to Hogwarts for his 8th year nothing turns out like he expected, but in the end maybe that will be a good thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life, Unexpected

**Author's Note:**

> This was a Dralentine's Day gift for shewhxmustnxtbenamed on tumblr.

It isn’t really that Draco is lonely. Not exactly. 

He has his studies to keep him busy and the weekly letters from his mother to look forward to. And sure, maybe it isn’t much but it is all he has and for as long as he can remember, at least since the war ended, he has done his very best to convince himself that it is enough. Not because he wants it to be, but because it needs to be.

Ever since he came back for his eighth year and realized he was the only Slytherin that had dared to come back, he’d been extra careful to keep himself. He was acutely aware of the poor choices he’d made, and what side he’d been on. 

Coming back hadn’t even been his idea, but his mother’s idea; she who had somehow convinced him it was never too late to become a better man and change his future. She had told him the Malfoy name was in his hands now and it was no longer about making his father proud but of becoming someone he could proud of himself.

Yet as soon as he’d come back instead of feeling like a fresh start it had felt like a constant reminder of his failures and poor choices. And so he’d been careful not to be noticed. To keep out of trouble. 

Almost as far back as he could recall he’d done absolutely everything he could to make sure people knew his name, that they remembered him, even if that memory was bad. But now….now he finds himself doing everything he can to not be noticed, to not be remembered; almost to not exist.

He is ashamed of the choices he made and of the legacy attached to his family’s name. Worst of all is the shame he feels at not regretting some of the choices he made, even when it hurt other people, because it kept his family safe. 

He sometimes wonders what the others would think of if they knew all the things he regretted, and especially the things he doesn’t.

And so he doesn’t join in on the weekly scrimmage Quidditch games the other 8th years put on most weekends. He doesn’t stay up late in the make-shift joint common room all the 8th years now share, studying and sharing sweets and laughing. And he definitely doesn’t spend countless hours staring at Potter who does all the things Draco doesn’t but still somehow manages to look just as lost and lonely as Draco feels. 

Not that Draco is lonely, because if you asked him he definitely isn’t. He knows he made his choices a long time ago and he knows there is absolutely no point in wanting things he cant have, or doesn’t deserve anymore.

Only sometimes, when he catches Potter’s eye from across the room, he has the uncanny sense that despite the fact that Potter won the war he lost just as much as Draco, perhaps even more.

 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

As September turns into October, the air gets colder and yet the atmosphere between most of the returning students seems to get warmer. The longer the other 8th years room together and eat together and attend most classes together, the more normal it begins to seem.

The problem is that Draco doesn’t join in their sentiments. Nothing about it feels normal to him. He isn’t sure if anything ever will again.

Which is why weeks later rather than joining his classmates at the Halloween feast he instead finds himself curled up with his potions book next to the roaring fire in one of the most comfortable armchairs. He so rarely gets to enjoy the common room, instead usually choosing to hide out in the library or his dorm room. 

If the chair he picks just so happens to be the same armchair that Potter always likes, and the one that everyone silently and unanimously leaves empty for him just in case he wants it, well that is clearly just a coincidence. It is a deep, rich red and rather ridiculously squashy and warm from the fire, and Draco feels more comfortable than he has since the moment he returned to Hogwarts well that’s merely a coincidence too.

In fact, Draco is so comfortable he has almost dozed off several times already when he hears familiar footsteps coming through the portrait hole. He doesn’t even need to turn around to know who it is.

“I’m not moving,” Draco says automatically, sounding more defensive than he means to.

“I wouldn’t expect you to.” 

Draco takes a deep breath, feeling his heart rattling in his chest. It isn’t fair that after all this time Potter is still the only one who can get to him. And sure they’ve been on some sort of odd neutral ground since the year started but the fact that Draco can’t figure out what Potter thinks of him anymore just unsettles him further.

“Yes well…that’s good then, Potter. Wouldn’t want you to have unrealistic expectations.”

“Gods no couldn’t have that.”

“Course not. Might go to your head. Make you think you were special or something.”

Draco isn’t sure how, or why, but without even looking up he just knows the other boy is smiling at him. 

After a rather awkward minute of silence Harry sits down in the armchair across from him. The smile has left his face and he begins to stare into the crackling fire as if remembering things best left forgotten.

Draco isn’t sure exactly what posses him, especially after working so hard not to get involved. Perhaps he just finds that haunted look too painful on Potter’s face; a look he thinks he knows it all too well and if anyone doesn’t deserve to feel that way it’s him.

“Have you finished your Potions essay, Potter?”

“Huh?”

“The essay, Potter. The one that’s due Monday. Have you finished it?”

“Not exactly.”

“Merlin, you haven’t even started it yet have you?”

He tries not to stare but it’s impossibly hard to look away from the other boy rubbing at his face awkwardly, his calloused fingers sliding across the sun tanned skin of his cheeks.

“I am not chastising you, Potter. I am offering you help.”

“Oh, well that’s….that’d be-”

“It’s fine if you’d rather not have help from someone like me it was a ridiculous idea anyway.”

“No! I mean yes! I mean no it’s not a ridiculous idea. You just surprised me.”

“You don’t know everything about me, Potter. I’m not the same person I was.”

As soon as he says it he wonders why he did, and he is more than half expecting a scathing remark which he is sure he deserves. 

What he isn't expecting however is for Potter to stare at him for only a few seconds before standing up and mumbling “budge over,” before sliding into the armchair right beside him, their sides pressed together closely. 

It is a very large chair, but still not exactly large enough for two eighteen year old boys. Draco can’t remember the last time he let another person get so close to him. He can feel the warmth of Potter’s skin practically burning through his clothes and if he leaned sideways just a little he’s sure he could smell the scent of his shampoo clinging to his recently washed hair.

If it were anyone else he would simply tell them to move immediately. But for reasons Draco is completely unwilling to entertain he finds he likes the warmth of Potter’s body and the way he smells like soap and fresh air. 

“Right, guess we better start at the beginning. And do pay attention I have much better things I could be doing with my time,” he lies, flipping his potions book open to the previous chapter. 

“You know you don’t have to do this if it’s too much trouble.”

“I don’t do things I don’t want to do, Potter.” Draco can feel the weight of Potter’s stare boring into his side and he forces himself to look up into unblinking green eyes. He wishes he didn’t still find them so unnerving. "At least not anymore I don’t,“ he finishes, his voice unusually quiet.

Potter continues watching him, until the beginnings of a smile appear on his face again just as he sinks back into the armchair. Draco tries his hardest not to watch the way the movement makes Potter’s jeans stretch tighter across his thighs. 

"That’s good, Malfoy.”

Draco isn’t sure if it’s good, but it’s not bad either and he figures that’s as good a place as any to start.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

The studying thing with Potter was only meant to be a one time thing. Just to get that awful look off his face. But Draco clearly hadn’t thought things through.  
He’d obviously not given any thought to just how ridiculous Gryffindors were, or at least how ridiculous a certain oblivious speccy eyed git was.

Potter seems to have decided that Draco offering to help him once meant he wanted to continue helping him. And spend time with him. All the time.  
The thing is, if he is honest with himself it isn’t even really that bad because when Potter is actually focused on his studies he is rather smart. So really it hasn’t affected his studies in the least. And despite his lifelong assumptions that Potter was annoying, the other boy turns out to be rather sarcastic and funny and Draco finds he rather likes his company, much more than he could’ve even imagined. 

It is just that Draco hadn’t counted on Potter dropping his book bag down with a loud thud onto the library table the morning after Halloween, then dropping down into the empty seat next to him (because there were always a lot of empty seats when Draco was around) and shooting him a lopsided grin before pulling out his own books and studying silently beside him. 

It is just about the oddest thing, because so far as Draco can tell the other boy doesn’t even actually want any help most of the time. Sure sometimes he has a random potions or transfiguration question, but mostly he just does his homework quietly next to him. Or pretends to anyway. Lots of times Draco catches Potter staring but he always studiously pretends he doesn’t notice. Draco almost told him to stop staring until he realized something; the rest of the students avoid looking at him altogether as if by avoiding eye contact they can erase his very existence. But not Potter. He doesn’t know what Potter sees when he looks at him but he finds it oddly reassuring that there is at least one person that is still looking, one person who isn’t afraid. 

Draco ultimately figures it will probably end up being a fluke that ends just about as abruptly as it begins, but no - Potter just keeps showing up wherever Draco is studying, even in his own dorm room for Merlins sake! 

After a few weeks, and no signs of it stopping, Draco stops being surprised when Potter shows up just about everywhere, even if he doesn’t entirely understand why he might want to be around him when some days Draco isn’t even sure he wants to be around himself.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

By the time December rolls around Draco has given up all pretense of pretending he doesn’t know Potter will be around all the time and instead begins arranging their study sessions in places he knows Potter likes the best; the big table in the library near the window where Potter likes to stare out over the Quidditch pitch on clear days, or in the great Hall on Saturday afternoons when the house elves are almost certain to send up warm treacle tart with afternoon tea, or sometimes after a particularly long day in the middle of the 8th year common room even though he knows Potter is more likely to fall asleep in his favorite armchair rather than do any actually studying.

Draco does all this silently and without fuss, and he is rather glad Potter’s obnoxious habit of asking questions Draco doesn’t want to answer does not extend to this. 

He knows Potter has noticed the change, and he can tell he is pleased. Truth be told he hadn’t realized just how little the other boy smiled until he began to do it more. And if Draco discovers that sometimes he is rather good at making Potter smile, well that’s just an accident. 

Sometimes when he is alone in his room Draco likes to pretend he made the changes so their studying would be easier, but deep down he knows it has a great deal more to do with the way his insides feel when Potter smiles at him almost as if they share a secret.

Draco is used to secrets. The kind that make your stomach ache with fear and your heart ache with regret. The insidious kind that take hold and leave a mark long after they’ve been revealed.

But not this, this unspoken secret they seem to share, which feels a lot more like the first drink of a warm butterbeer after playing in the snow or the way he felt the first time he’d caught the snitch; it feels victorious.

Which is exactly why Draco knows it can’t last.

Because he will never be a winner. Not anymore.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

“Stop being such a fucking wanker and just take it!”

Potter’s face is flushed bright red and his hands are clenched tightly at his sides. He looks like he might explode. Draco hasn’t seen so much emotion on his face in a long time. He briefly wonders if that’s why he’s doing it, just to get a rise out of him. 

He wishes that were why.

“Look I don’t need it anymore and I certainly don’t need your pity or your charity!”

“It’s not pity or charity, it’s your fucking wand! Why don’t you want it back?”

Draco just stares at him wondering how he could possibly explain that he wants nothing more than his old wand back, and at the same time how he is terrified of it; of the person he was and the things he did. He doesn’t know how to explain that taking the wand back somehow feels like going back, feels like reverting back into someone he has worked so hard not to be anymore.  
Which is why when Potter tries to give him his wand back before he has to leave for Christmas break Draco loses it. 

He can’t bare to say the truth out loud and so, almost without even thinking about it, he lashes out and accuses Potter of holding it back because he didn’t think Draco was good enough, even accusing him of stealing it, before finally looking up at him with all the pent up hatred he feels for himself. Because he knows this thing they have going on, whatever it is, can’t last and all he knows is that he’d rather push Potter away than wait for him to walk away of his own accord.

But of course stupid Potter couldn’t just get mad at him and leave for break like a normal person, no he had to just keep arguing with him and waving the stupid wand about like it was a matter of life and death.

“Look I don’t want it.”

“But-”

“I DON’T WANT IT ANYMORE! Don’t you understand?! Don’t you remember?!"   
He finally snaps, his chest heaving and his own hands now balled into fists. He shoves them into his robe pockets hoping Potter won’t notice.

"Malfoy-”

“NO.”

“I thought-”

“What you thought because we study together now that you know what I want I want? That you know what I need? Think you know all about me, Potter?”

“Fuck why do you have to be so difficult! Is it so hard to believe that maybe I do think I know you? Maybe I do think I know what you want. What’s so bad about having a friend?”

Potter’s voice has trailed off by the time he finishes and Draco almost wishes he would’ve screamed it. The words feel so much sharper this way. 

Friends. Is that what they are? Draco wants to deny it but he knows it’s true. However unbelievable it might seem despite their shared history, somehow Potter has become his friend. His only friend. But no matter what Draco might want he knows it can’t work, knows he doesn’t know how to put someone else first. 

Even now his first inclination isn’t to be honest like Potter would be, not even to save the friendship or whatever else it might be. Instead all he can think about is getting away before he gets hurt, or before he hurts someone else.  
And if the dejected look on Potter’s face is anything to go by he’s already hurting him whether he meant to or not.

“Look-”

“No you look!” Potter shouts, and Draco snaps his mouth shut automatically. "If you don’t want this stupid wand then fine don’t take it. You can have your reasons and your secrets, but stop fucking pretending this is about US because it’s not! I have to leave for Christmas break now before Ron and Hermione try to come find me.“

And then before Draco can even begin to try and figure out how on earth he’s supposed to respond to that, because of course he should’ve known stupid Potter would never let him get away with anything especially not lying, the other boy is striding across the room and wrapping his arms around Draco. It’s a rather tight and awkward hug, but Potter smells like fire and chocolate and something deep and tight in Draco’s heart begins to loosen with the embrace. He can’t remember the last time someone hugged him.

"Have a Merry Fucking Christmas you giant prat,” Potter whispers.

The hug only lasts a few seconds before Potter is walking away, flashing him a rather shy smile and waving as he exits the portrait hole. Draco’s entire body feels flushed and he is immensely glad there is no one left in the common room to see the absolutely ridiculous smile he feels spreading across his face.

Happy fucking Christmas indeed he thinks, dropping down into Potter’s favorite armchair and closing his eyes.

 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

“How was your break?” Potter asks two weeks later, flopping down onto the bench next to Draco and pointedly ignoring all the other students in the great hall now staring at them.

“It was acceptable.”

“Acceptable?” Potter asks, his eyebrows scrunched up and his lips pulled together in a funny sort of pucker. Draco wishes he wouldn’t make that face so often because it always leaves him with the strangest urge to touch his face.  
“It was just wonderful if you must know. I took full advantage of the quiet and lack of distractions and did lots of studying.”

“Wait you stayed here alone? I thought you were going home for the Holidays.”  
He wonders why Potter looks so concerned. It’s not as if he can stand his parents anyway you’d think he’d be happy to know Draco had stayed.

“Yes well you thought wrong.”

“But you said-”

“Merlin, Potter, what do you do keep a notebook with of all the things I say?” Draco feels his face heat up in embarrassment and can only imagine the ugly pink splotches that must be spreading across his neck. He yanks at his collar self consciously. If Potter notices he has the decency not to say anything.  
The only thing Draco hates more than lying is being caught.

“You’re a right prat sometimes you know that?”

“No one is making you stay, Potter,” but even as the words leave his mouth he feels sick to his stomach with the thought of him actually leaving. 

Loathe as he is to admit it the last two weeks alone were some of the most lonely of his life and that is saying something all things considered. It’d been a painful discovery this last fortnight without him realizing just how used to his company he has become, and just how much he had missed him.

Potter however just rolls his eyes, frowning slightly at Draco before reaching over and stealing a piece of toast off his plate. It’s on the tip of his tongue to chastise Potter for stealing his food but instead he finds himself staring at the spot of strawberry jam that gets stuck on the side of the other boys mouth.   
“I think we need to talk,” Potter says, when he’s finished off yet another piece of Draco’s toast and half his perfectly sweetened tea. The words make Draco’s stomach drop uncomfortably but before he can say anything Potter is talking again. "I don’t do things I don’t want to do. Do you understand me?“

"What’s your point?” He asks apprehensively. 

Potter just smiles at him. A rare, open smile that makes Draco’s stomach flip again for entirely different reasons. 

“It means, Mr. Grumpy pants, that I like spending time with you and that we’re friends. It means I’m here because I want to be and that if you haven’t scared me off yet you aren’t going to. And mostly it means that you don’t need to tell me who you are because I’ve seen it. I know who you were Malfoy and you know who I was. We both did things were not proud of and I think…look you’re different and I don’t need you to say sorry or keep thinking I’m gonna wake up one day and remember what you did and leave. I always remember. I can’t forget, not what you did or what I did, not any of it. But I think you want a different future just as much as me so if you’d stop trying to push me away for five minutes maybe you’d see we both want the same things and that maybe we’re not so different as we always thought.”

By the time he has finished talking Draco thinks his mouth must be hanging open in shock. He hadn’t known Potter was capable of that much emotional maturity. 

“Yes well….I suppose being stuck with you wouldn’t be entirely unacceptable.” He wants to say more but he doesn’t feel capable of the type of emotional honesty Potter always seems to display. 

Despite his misgivings whatever he’s said seems to be enough though because Potter looks like he’s holding back another smile.

 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

After Potter returns and classes resume once more, time seems to pass by in a bit of blur for Draco who finds himself inexplicably drawn into studying in the common room with the other 8th years quite a bit more, which then in turn leads to being dragged down to the Quidditch pitch at ungodly early hours on the weekends for seekers matches with Potter and occasionally even joining in on the scrimmage games with the others too.

Draco isn’t sure what he expects, perhaps to be hexed at every turn. He sometimes wonders if Potter has said something because the others seem to be regarding him as though they aren’t sure what to make of him. And yet despite that they seem ready enough to accept him into their study groups and games.

Before Draco realizes it, it’s February, which comes with biting cold air and frosty winds.

“Remind me again why we’re out here at the crack of dawn, Potter? It’s fucking freezing,” Draco complains, and he doesn’t care how whiny he sounds because not even his love of Quidditch could be enough to explain why he’s heading to the pitch for a Seekers game at seven in the morning on a Saturday when he could be having a lie in where it was warm and comfortable back at the castle.

“Because it’s perfect flying weather that’s why! You know you love it.”

“I most certainly don’t love it I can’t even feel my nose any more.”

Draco nearly crashes into Potter who has stopped walking, and instead has set his broom down in the grass and is smiling at Draco. He does that a lot lately something which Draco finds slightly unsettling because it makes it impossible not to smile back at him. 

“You’re such a baby, Malfoy,” he laughs, his eyes crinkling up in the corners with amusement as he unwinds his own scarf from around his neck then steps forward to wrap it around Draco’s. His fingers are ice cold and Draco inhales sharply as the rough pads of Potter’s thumbs brush across his cheek as he fixes the scarf to cover his nose.

“Better?” He asks quietly, and Draco is almost afraid to answer in case the other boy suddenly realizes his hands are still resting on his face. Instead he just nods.

“Good….that’s good,” Potter says, stepping back and reaching for his broom on the ground. There is the beginnings of a blush on his face and Draco feels as if he’s missed something. 

“Race you to the pitch!” Draco shouts suddenly, playfully knocking into Potter’s shoulder as he begins to run. 

By the time they make it to the Quidditch pitch both of them are flushed and breathless, collapsing onto the grass and staring into the sky. Potter seems the same as usual, already chatting about the new issue of Quidditch Weekly he just received and some advert he is keen to show him, and Draco thinks that perhaps he imagined it all. 

 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

It’s nearly a week later when Draco decides that the entire Hogwarts population has collectively lost their minds. Bat shit crazy. All of them.

Everywhere he looks the students seem to be coupling off leading up to Valentine’s Day, as if no one could possibly be single for the sorry excuse of a holiday. Well that and he keeps running into groups of students who are huddled together whispering and giggling which he finds both annoying and unnerving to say the least.

The most disturbing thing of all however is when Draco realizes that just about everyone that’s not paired off and sucking face in the hidden alcoves all over the castle, are all staring at Potter. Everyone from giggling first and second years following him around the library like lost puppies to the older students staring at him over their books or breakfast. 

It’s not as Draco wasn’t already aware of Potter’s popularity, or the fact that despite the other boys complete obliviousness to it all he is in fact fancied by half the school. It’s just that he finds it more than a little unsettling to suddenly realize that everywhere they go people are staring, only this time for entirely different reasons.

Potter, as expected, makes absolutely no notice to the increased attention which unfortunately doesn’t do much to ease Draco’s rising feelings of unease. He tries to tell himself that he isn’t jealous, because it would be utterly pointless. They’re only friends after all and Draco being jealous of someone wanting to date Potter would be absolutely ridiculous.

The problem is the closer to Valentine’s Day it gets the more Draco realizes just how many people are hoping Potter will be their Valentine, and even worse that he is one of them.

He finds he suddenly can’t breathe when on Monday morning while studying in the library Potter leans across him for a spare bit of parchment and Draco is left with a face full of Potter’s hair which turns out to be twice as soft as it looks and surprisingly smells a bit like vanilla. Draco definitely doesn’t close his eyes for a moment imagining his hands fisted in that hair and Potter shoved back against the table.

And he finds it impossible to concentrate on eating when, on Wednesday morning in the Great Hall, Potter keeps nicking things off of his plate and looking immensely pleased with himself, his eyes gleaming with pleasure and mischief.

And when, on the night before Valentine’s Day Potter falls asleep half in his lap in the middle of the deserted common room while studying, arching his back before pressing his face into Draco’s stomach and sighing happily before he falls asleep Draco knows he is entirely fucked. 

Because he knows, as he gently removes Potter’s glasses and sets them to the side before running a fingertip across his eyelids, he doesn’t just want to be Potter’s Valentine.

He wants to be his everything

 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

The morning of the fourteenth Draco wakes far too early only to hear the rain pounding against the window. He thinks the weather is rather fitting; cold and gloomy like his mood.

The day does not improve from there. 

By the time he manages to reach the great hall for breakfast he is late because he has somehow had to dodge at least a dozen couples snogging in the middle of the hallways, and been witness to three rejected Valentine’s. 

As he walks into the hall the sight he is met with leaves him feeling as if a Valentine’s Card has thrown up. There are floating pink and red hearts all over the ceiling and every table seems to be full of love sick students making heart eyes at each other or nervously watching another person as they open a Valentine. He has never seen anything like it in all his time at Hogwarts and while he truly appreciates people’s desire to celebrate and move on from the war, he can’t help but feel a bit nauseated and grumpy at the sight of so much pink, and so many happy people.

The worst of all however comes when he sets eyes on Potter, who is sitting between Weasley and Granger as if they can protect him from the rest of the school. Although it doesn’t appear to have been helping since he seems to be drowning in a sea of Valentine’s. There are even several doves floating above his head dropping down confetti, and if it were any other time Draco would be on the floor laughing both at the ridiculous appearance of Potter with a head full of heart glitter and the absolutely indignant look on his face.

He stands there in the center of the room for a few minutes, just taking stalk of the situation and wondering who on earth all the Valentine’s are from, especially since if he’s not mistaken it looks like someone has even given him a rather gaudy pair of heart boxers which he clearly attempted to hide beneath a pile of chocolate frogs and heart shaped boxes of sweets.

Just when Draco thinks he’s worked up the courage to join Potter despite the chaos, he sees Ginny walking towards Harry with an oversized white teddy bear with a red bowtie around its neck, and the smile Potter gives her is enough to freeze his insides. 

He turns around and leaves so quickly he doesn’t see Potter rise to stand on the bench, shouting his name and waving after him.  
Draco does a fair job of avoiding Potter the rest of the day, getting to class late and picking the seat farthest away from the other boy in Transfigurations and Charms and avoiding Potions class altogether on the off chance they might be required to work together.

In fact, Draco doesn’t see Potter all the rest of the day, or at least not until almost midnight when Potter somehow manages to find him hiding up in the astronomy tower trying to drown his sorrows in a bottle of Ogdens Best Firewhiskey.

“The least you could do is share,” is all Potter says, sliding down the wall to sit next to Draco. Potter sits close enough that their sides are pressed together and Draco is distinctly aware of that now familiar hint of vanilla, the treacle tart Potter must’ve had for dessert and the fact that his body is practically burning with heat compared to Draco.

“Yes well I’m certainly not stingy,” Draco replies, handing over the bottle.  
Potter just snorts before grabbing the bottle and chugging down at least as much firewhiskey as Draco has had in the last hour.

“Merlin, Potter, what the bloody hell are you trying to?!”

“I thought that was rather obvious,” he says, looking far too pleased with himself considering the amount of alcohol he is rapidly consuming.

“Nothing about you is obvious, Potter.”

The other boy stops drinking at his words, blinking once before staring at Draco so long he feels like he might forget how to breathe soon.

“Why have you been avoiding me all day?” 

Draco thinks maybe the staring was better. 

“I need more alcohol for this conversation,” Draco says, reaching out for the bottle but Potter just shakes his head holding the bottle out of his reach. "Oh come on you, prat. It’s my alcohol anyway!“

"I’ll give it to you on one condition.”

“And what’s that?”

“You answer a question first.”

“What question?”

“Not part of the deal.”

“Fine, fine. Give me back my firewhiskey and I’ll answer your bloody question. But only if I get to ask one first.”

Potter waits for only a moment before holding the bottle out which Draco snatches quickly, talking an extra long swig from the bottle and willing it to give him some courage.

“So, Potter, get any good Valentine’s? Maybe from a certain redhead.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh please I saw that ridiculous bear the Weasley girl gave you. Get back together did you?”

“You can’t be serious. Ginny? Ginny didn’t give me a Valentine! Why the hell would she do that when she’s been dating Neville all term.”

“Longbottom?”

“He gave her the bear.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Potter says quietly, knocking their knees together.

Draco feels like an absolute arse, but Potter doesn’t seem to be angry. Instead just keeps staring at him and Draco wonders what he’s hoping to see.

“So why have you been avoiding me all day?”

“Because I hate Valentine’s Day,” Draco answers, and even if it’s only part of the truth it’s not a lie.

“Oh come on, that’s not all it is.”

“I hate Valentine’s Day ok. I don’t like looking at everyone so….so-”

“Happy,” Potter finishes and Draco knows if he weren’t so drunk this conversation definitely wouldn’t be happening.

“They’ve all moved on and found someone who likes them. No one is ever going to like me like that ok. Not after the things I’ve done. Who in their right mind would want to be with me?”

Draco slumps down when he’s done talking, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back against the wall with a dull thud.

“Malfoy-”

“I don’t want your pity, Potter ok. I-” but the next thing he knows there are warm, calloused fingers on his cheeks and when he dares to open his eyes it’s to see Potter kneeling before him, cradling his face in his hands and looking at Draco in a way that makes him feel as if he is being seen for the first time.

“Me,” Potter whispers, his mouth just a few inches from Draco’s face.

“You what?” Draco whispers, not daring to believe this is really happening.  
Potters voice is somehow gentle when he speaks, as if he too is overcome. "I want to be with you.“

"Yes well….you’ve never been in your right mind,” Draco says with a fond smile, pleased when the corner of Potter’s lip turn up in the corner as he fights back his own smile.

“That makes two of us then.”

Before Draco can formulate a proper response Potter is kissing him and Draco thinks he could definitely get used to this, used to the other boy’s warm and demanding lips, the way he licks and nips and whimpers as he nearly climbs into Draco’s lap. 

And really it’s almost too much for Draco who slides his hands under the other boys jumper, desperate for something to hold on to but he isn’t prepared for the way Potter responds, grinding down against him and sucking on his bottom lip. 

Experimentally he drags his fingers up and down Potter’s spine before teasing them along the waistband of his trousers, delighting in the way Potter presses down into him, gasping into the kiss.

It’s sloppy and desperate and absolutely perfect. 

There is too much teeth and both of them are a bit too drunk to have good enough aim which means a lot of kisses that end up on cheeks and chins and jaws instead of mouths but none of it seems to matter as long as they’re still touching and kissing.

Draco doesn’t know how long it lasts, only knows that by the time they finally break apart it’s only out of sheer desperation. Potter rests his forehead against Draco’s, tangling his fingers in Draco’s hair and panting heavily. Draco continues to stroke the small of Potter’s back, terrified of speaking first and breaking the spell.

“You’re amazing,” Potter whispers and it takes Draco a few moments to open his eyes and realize that yes Potter is indeed talking to him. Potter whose eyes are glistening and whose face is flushed, and whose hair looks more messed up than ever with his swollen lips and red cheeks. 

“You’re not so bad yourself,” he whispers back, and Potter leans in for another kiss. It’s just a small one this time, gentle and undemanding, but full of so much promise it takes his breath away.

And for the first time in a long time Draco realizes that maybe it’s ok to trust not only himself but someone else. That it is ok to want things.

Potter pulls back slowly this time, looking at him as if he is everything he has ever wanted, and Draco thinks that maybe he is. That just maybe they are each exactly what the other one needs, and wants.


End file.
